Posted on 16 Comments

Installing & upgrading CQRLOG on a Raspberry Pi

Updated 17 July 2020 to add missing wildcards from the apt install line!

CQRLOG is one of the most complete contact logging programs for Linux and the Raspberry Pi, but building the latest version from source can be problematic. In this post I’ll show you a simple trick that simplifies the upgrade.

The main source of build problems is database configuration. The simple solution is to first install the old version of CQRLOG fom the Pi repository. To do that, open a terminal session (Ctl-Alt-T) and enter the following line:

sudo apt install cqrlog

By installing from the repository, all the supporting software, including the database application will also be installed. Once the installation has completed you should run CQRLOG by typing cqrlog. Answer’yes’ when asked if you want to store logs on the local machine. This will configure the database and could take a few minutes to complete. Once complete open a log and you will probably see prompts to download various updates, you should accept these. When you’re happy that everything looks ok, close CQRLOG.

With the old version installed and working, we can start the upgrade process. There are two parts to the process. The first is to install some prerequisite packages that are required to support the build. We then download the source code and build the latest version – all with just 6 lines of commands and here they are:

sudo apt install -y lcl*2.0 lazarus*2.0 fp*3.0.4 fpc*3.0.4 libssl-dev
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/ok2cqr/cqrlog.git
cd cqrlog
make
sudo make install

You can now start CQRLOG and you will find that you have the latest version.

Installing an old package from the repository can be a quick way to overcome build problems with other software. It doesn’y always work but can be worth a try.

Mike – G4WNC

16 thoughts on “Installing & upgrading CQRLOG on a Raspberry Pi

  1. Many thanks for all your work in this arena. I recently retired (age 7o+) and am returning to Amateur Radio and have just embarked on building a RaspberryPi ‘radio-workstation’ . I have just ordered SD cards from yourself and will interfacing the Pi to both my IC-7810 and IC-810H to caver all bands. The recent acquisition of an 8G-Pi-4 has made a huge difference in performance after the Pi-3. Hopefully, my ageing HP-8200 Windows workstation and HP-8400 Ubuntu-linux platforms can be decommissioned reducing my Electricity bill and reducing the temperature in the shack/

    Thanks again Mike …. de G4FUA at IO81rm

  2. Man have I got a lot to learn… Mind boggling

    1. Hi Tom, I’m sure you’ll be fine. It just requires some persistence and everything will fall into place 🙂

      Mike – G4WNC

  3. pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cd ~
    pi@raspberrypi:~ $ git clone https://github.com/ok2cqr/cqrlog.git
    fatal: destination path ‘cqrlog’ already exists and is not an empty directory.

    1. Just delete the directory cqrlog and all will be well.

      Regards,

      Mike – G4WNC

  4. Can I remove Lazarus after making CQRLOG install? I don’t need it afterwards do I?

    73,
    Kevin
    KX4KU

    1. Hi Kevin,

      Apologies for the late reply. You could remove Lazarus but you’ll probably need to reinstall it when the next upgrade is released. Unless you’re short of space, I would leave it.

      Mike – G4WNC

  5. Hi Mike,
    thank you! Worked like a charm (running CQRLOG 2.4.0 on RPi4 now)!
    Regards,
    Frank – DK2FL

  6. Hello MIke,
    Thanks for the tutorial.
    Everthing seems to be installed correctly and cqrlog is starting up.
    But I cannot connect t wsjtx.
    During installing there was this text:

    9015) Linking /home/pi/cqrlog/src/cqrlog
    cqrlog.lpr(96) Warning: (9034) “crtbegin.o” not found, this will probably cause a linking failure
    cqrlog.lpr(96) Warning: (9034) “crtend.o” not found, this will probably cause a linking failure
    /usr/bin/ld.bfd: warning: /home/pi/cqrlog/src/link.res contains output sections; did you forget -T?
    (1008) 100794 lines compiled, 93.4 sec
    (1021) 23 warning(s) issued
    strip src/cqrlog
    gzip tools/cqrlog.1 -c > tools/cqrlog.1.gz
    pi@raspberrypi:~/cqrlog $

    So the question is:
    What went wrong and how can I fix it?

    With kind regards
    73

    /

  7. Thanks , Now got CQRLOG 2.5.2 working !!!!

    1. Hi Robert,

      Thanks for the feedback. Mike – G4WNC

  8. Mike thank you very much… I have installed … working perfect.. VU2XTO

    1. Glad to be of service. Mike – G4WNC

  9. Hi Mike
    I’ve successfully run this procedure 2 or 3 times on Buster. However, when running the line: “sudo apt install -y lcl*2.0 lazarus*2.0 fp*3.0.4 fpc*3.0.4 libssl-dev” in Bullseye I get the following response:
    E: Unable to locate package fp*3.0.4
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘fp*3.0.4’
    E: Unable to locate package fpc*3.0.4
    E: Couldn’t find any package by glob ‘fpc*3.0.4’
    The subsequent make command unsurprisingly fails.
    Do you know if this procedure stills works in Bullseye?
    73 de Roger.

    1. Hi Roger,

      It seems that Free Pascal 3.0.4 is not available in Bullseye, but you should be able to substitute with fp*3.2.0 and fpc*3.2.0
      If that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll take a deeper look.

      Regards,

      Mike – G4WNC

  10. Hi Mike

    Just gave the above suggestion a try and it worked perfectly in Bullseye.

    Thanks for your help.

    73 de Roger.

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